With Meizu's M3s, the market for premium build quality and looks in the entrylevel space is heating up. The closest competitor to the M3s is Xiaomi's Redmi 3s Prime though there are already many options in the space including Lenovo Vibe K5 Plus, Samsung Galaxy On7 and Moto G4 Play .

The M3s and Redmi 3s Prime look sort of similar, though right at the outset, it has to be said that the Redmi offers more bang for the buck -it's slightly cheaper, has a bigger battery (4100mAh vs 3040mAh in M3s), has newer Android 6.0 (vs 5.1 in the M3s) plus includes an IR emitter (for universal remote functions) and FM. In all other aspects, these are two very similar phones.

The M3s is a small phone with a metal unibody design. There are a few colours available and it looks pleasant albeit a little plain. The first thing you have to realise with Meizu phones is that they don't have the conventional Android buttons on either side of the home button. There is one central button with multiple functions: it's the fingerprint scanner, you click it for home and tap it to go back. The fingerprint works fast enough, though not as fast as the Redmi -plus you have to click it to wake & unlock. The glass doesn't seem to have much protection against scratches either, evidenced by a couple of deep scratches after a few days of use. Now, on to the good parts.

The M3s has the company's Flyme OS which is full of features and shies away from including any bloatware. There is no app drawer, you get a universal search and some of the useful apps include a user center (for anti theft), theme engine and security app (with cleaner, accelerator, blacklist, app permissions, anti-virus, power settings etc). There's also an extra-large easy mode, screen colour temperature adjustment and a DND mode. The camera is quite the surprise: it's quick to start up and captures some decent looking photos (especially macro). You also get multiple modes like manual, panorama, GIF, slomo and light field (after shot focus effects). The front camera is passable while both cameras can record up to 1080p video in good quality .

Performance from the MT6750 octa core processor and 2GB RAM was about average. The phone doesn't feel very fast, though it does support 4G networks.There is a bit of sluggishness while multi-tasking as well. Overall though, the M3s is not bad, just beaten to the punch by the Redmi 3s.

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